What Is Nike's Competitive Strategy

Nike is the leading and renowned world supplier of athletic apparel and shoes. The brand is in control of over 47% of the market for athletic shoes. The company begun way back in 1962 and it was founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bower. It was originally known as Blue Ribbon Support and only in 1978 did it change its name to the worldwide recognized brand, Nike. Nike provides its products to more than 100 countries throughout the world.
The legendary position that Nike enjoys today has been achieved through attractive and innovative design, high quality production and effective marketing strategies. There are very many marketing strategies that the company has put in place to make sure that its products appeal to different segments of the market.

Simply put, Nike’s target market is mainly customers who have more concern for the quality and utility of the product than they have for the price at which the product is being sold. This helps to ensure that pricing never has to be adjusted downwards in attempts to woo in a larger number of customers. For any company to achieve success from the marketing strategies that it has put in place, it has to ensure that its strategy is flexible enough to keep up with the changing times and to also accommodate a large variety of customers. So as to do this, it is imperative that the products being produced by the company be innovative enough to exceed what is being provided by competitors in every possible way. Nike chose to take this into deep consideration and this resulted in it making a few changes on its marketing strategy. Among the changes that it chose to make

In the year 2010, it spent almost $800 million on ‘non-traditional’ methods of advertising.
• Nike has chosen to target the seventeen year olds more as research has shown that the 17 years olds spend 20% more on shoes than the adults.
• It has decided to do away with the dependence on the ‘big budget top-down brand campaigns that usually celebrate just one hit.
• Its advertising and marketing campaigns are widely split between advertising agencies that specialize in recent technologies and social media.
• It has chosen to focus more on the production of ‘cool stuff’’.
To further enhance its marketing attempts, Nike has chosen to go digital. It has chosen to invest more in the use of digital marketing techniques and this can be clearly seen from what is given below.
• For the first time since it was founded, Nike is not fully relying on a number of superstars to move its products.
• After it finished perfecting its branding act, Nike chose to move onto a world in which its customers want to hear less talk and see more action.
• In 2010, it launched a new division that goes by the name Nike Digital Sport.
• It has hired a large number of engineers whose job is to develop technology that resonates with digital